Viral Marketing or Is It Publicity?

Getting visual with publicity

The popular term in today’s marketing on the web is Viral. This is becoming a hot subject as well as a new marketing tool that advertisers, not all, are embracing. Getting in on a new technology is sometimes a good thing. But not knowing how it will fair out can be risky business.

viral videos and publicityRecently, a viral campaign was put to the test. A viral video was created using mentos and Diet Coke. The visual showed a geyser being created when mentos was put into the 2-liter bottle.

The video was viewed 600,000 times on such web sites as YouTube. This can be a great number when shown to potential advertisers. As with all new publicity and marketing tactics, there are the pros and cons of this new media.

One the good note, you can get your message, or visual of the product viewed by hundreds of thousands quickly. The negative, you cannot control how and when or where the video is viewed. It’s possible that your video is sent to a bunch of people who want to alter it, or place it near a porn video. No to do anything intentional, but again, no control on where it is viewed.

Another point, it is difficult to really track the effectiveness and direst sales results. Although the people at Mentos believe it worked well that they created a web site to encourage viewers to create their own videos.

This story about Mentos, and viral videos is getting a lot of media attention. In turn it is now part of the publicity phenomenon. Good or bad, a company needs to deal with the new media and be prepared to handle the direction it takes–good or bad.

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Getting a Solid Brand Identity

Where do you start?

building a brandIn order to build a successful branding program for a company name, or a product requires several steps. To begin, you need to make sure you have a plan in place.

Branding is more than plastering your name on ads, flyers, or on your web site. It is more than running a bunch of radio or TV spots. Yes, this will get your company noticed, but only for the period of the media schedule.

It starts within the company. It is the culture that is developed. Some people mix their branding with a company’s "mission statement", or their company philosophy. These are separate and need to remain separate. Building a brand takes time. Some company’s are impatient and cannot wait the few months it takes to gain recognition, so they spend a lot of money on various media to get the word out.

This will help jump start any branding campaign, but it is short lived. You need to have a consistent plan that is more than a one shot campaign. I could go on to explain this further, but it will only become a long blog. <a href="http://www.technorati.com/claim/uwjgsy8u4d" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>My point in writing this is to help pr clients realize that branding should be a very important part of your business plan and should be implemented in order to compete in today’s market.

If your company needs some guidance in developing a branding campaign, please give us a call. Our free consultation can show you how to incorporate a successful branding campaign into your company.

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10 Tips To Get Reporters Familiar With You

Basic but important

It seems that publicity firms, pr people and some publicity professionals fear calling the media unless they have something to give to them, like a story.

Helpful tips on publicityI’m not saying to just call them and talk about the weather. I feel that publicity people need to contact the press more often to know what they are looking for. Each writer, reporter and publisher of a magazine, has particular interests. Knowing this can further your relationship to have a public relations campaign get more exposure for your pr clients.

Use these 10 tips to get to know the media better:
1- Explain new trends that your pr client is experiencing and how it relates to the industry
2- Inquire about the types of subjects THEY prefer to write about
3- Get to know them, ask what they do during off hours, their hobbies, etc
4- Be sure to give a reporter all your contact information, office number, cell number, email address, even your home number if it is a reporter that might need to contact you during off business hours
5- Don’t be afraid to ask them how else you can be of help to them
6- Always send them a thank you note when something gets published
7- Provide names of people in your company that can be available to answer questions in your absence
8- It is ok to submit stories, but first make sure it is the type of stories they like to publish
9- Become an expert..or get your pr client to be a resource expert by offering them for information
10- Read these again. Then visit the Publicity Hound that adds a few more to this list.

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Rolodex of Reporters

Keep an updated list of the reporters

reporters and editorsEvery time you write a press release for you pr clients, you need to make sure you already have a media list formulated. A mistake is to send each release to every media on your Rolodex listing. That doesn’t help get your company or pr client noticed.

By targeting specific writers or reporters with your press releases, or articles can better improve your chances to get published. If you are doing your own publicity in-house, then be sure that your database of reporters is current. Media people move around a lot and having a current roster of names that match the media is good practice, and it will reduce embarrassing follow-ups.

It is worth your time to categorize a reporter’s list for each client. Even if your publicity firm specializes in a specific market, you will soon learn that certain media will become more familiar with an account or company. That can work in your favor. Knowing reporters, writers, or any media on that level can further a relationship with the press.

These tips may seem common sense, and I hope that you are using them. But the reality is, as common sense goes, we tend to ignore these tips and soon become unknown with the press because of little things like keeping your database of reporters current.

If you feel that your list may not be current, then contact a outside company, even another pr firm, to help with the launch of the publicity campaign. Then begin working on your list.

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Do You Have A Media Press Room?

Start with your web site

News room onlineEveryone knows that journalists are constantly on tight deadlines. In order for them to do a good job, they need to get the information fast and easily.

Your web site should have a pressroom that showcases all the releases, media fact sheet, personnel profiles, among other important media information. Your online pressroom makes it easy for even the sales team to direct clients and potential clients to see how the media views the company.

Yes, I did say the sales team. What pr clients and pr professionals need to do is work together. Everyone in the company, from the front office person to the warehouse and shippers, need to work together. They all contribute to the culture of the company, which in general is your branding. But that’s another subject.

Let’s get back to the pressroom.

If you feel that you don’t have anything to put in thebrainstroming in a meeting pressroom, then it’s time to have a meeting with the sales people, the marketing staff and the publicity members. Bringing everyone together to contribute to this can be rewarding. It can also get out-of-hand. So a clear agenda needs to be in place for the meeting to adhere to.

I saw a blog on PowerPR’s site that discussed working in groups. This is kinda like that idea. In his blog, they speak of brainstorming. Well, if that’s what it takes, then go for it!

If you need some help in developing a brainstorming session, then read this article in Business Week to help inspire your team. Thanks again to PowerPR for this tip.

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Keywords as a Publicity Tool

Get Your Releases Noticed

Keywords and key phrasesPublicity writing can be a challenge when you are trying to write several press releases for the same client without repeating the same phrases that we all tend to use in our writing styles.

So what is the answer to this writing pattern? Try using a keyword search tool.

The Internet has opened up a vast amount of tools for all of the publicity and advertising industries. The problem is not everyone sees or really understands how to apply these great tools to their everyday business activities. For example, I just mentioned that publicity writers should use keyword search tools to make their press releases, articles more targeted to the pr client’s market.

PR Clients want to know that when a press release is submitted, it gets published and noticed. One way to help this process along, is by inserting the different phrases and keywords that you might not have considered.

Why use these keywords and phrases? For a lot of reasons! One of the most important reasons– your release on the internet will get higher rankings and help your PR Clients web site rank higher as well.

Reporters, when searching for specific topics, will find your release easier and faster because of the keywords you inserted.

There are a lot of keyword tools, such as Overture, Wordtracker among many others. Visit one of these keyword search tools, try it and I can assure you that words and phrases will appear that you probably didn’t think about before.

One more important point. The number next to these keywords are the number of people who typed that word or phrase into a search engine. That makes these tools more valuable when writing.

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Writing Skills

How to write for the web


A friend asked me if there is a difference in writing techniques when creating brochures, press releases and web sites. You probably know that my answer was YES. I directed him to my blog a few days ago that addressed this issue. Then today, I saw an article that was describing the writing habits for the web.

I was pleased to see another person realized the need to educate publicity writers how different it is when writing anything that appears on the web.

Let me share with you some of my findings and experience.
First you need to accept that the web is different when it comes to writing anything. Here are a few reasons how it is different:

  • Text is hard to read. Most computers have low resolution, even the higher the resolution, and the smaller the type. This makes it more difficult for people to read on-screen text. They tend to read slower, comprehend less and recall less.
  • The web allows you to link pages and sources. Unlike print, you cannot link to other articles, or resources.

Ok, if you agree with these two points let’s move into "How you should write for the web".

  • Keep your articles down to 1,000 words. Why, because of my point above that says text is hard to read!
  • Use sub-headings and bullet text when possible. This gives the reader a chance to scan the article.
  • Give more info. This is where you want to use the links. Provide links to your sources, or references. It helps to build that link strategy you need for the search engines.
  • Speaking of links, use keywords and phrases when writing. Don’t go wild and pack a lot of them into the article. That will get you negative action from the search engines. Use keywords wisely and the engines will treat you nice.

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Regal Medical Group Chooses Carson

Medical account sees positive marketing

Not very often do we get the opportunity to shout and let the world know of our new accounts. But this was one we need to mention.

Regal Medical GroupRegal Medical Group is a new company that offers the services to its doctors and patients’ bringing them health plans and government programs for better family healthcare.

As we do with all new accounts, we had a fact-finding meeting to review the goals and objectives with the different marketing and publicity strategies to make "positive things happen" for Regal Medial Group. Priority for the company was to develop several brochures for the doctor’s directories for the different regions in Orange County, CA. The challenge was to meet a rigid deadline. It was successful and we did it all in record time, and within budget.

The medical program has quickly grown and now we are developing literature for the Inland Empire. Regal Medical is having us work closely with them to identify the best marketing and pr strategies to target their audience.

I’m telling you these things, because it is great when clients fully trust your input and work together as part of an overall team. It is this open relationship, which we started from our first meeting that will have positive impacts on both sides.

We will be working on all areas of web marketing, publicity, direct mail, incentive programs, literature and marketing.

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Building More Quality Traffic

Web Marketing and Publicity

What? You still think those people in the IT department are not part of the overall publicity program? If you cannot work with your web marketing staff, or outside source (if you don’t do this in-house), then you’re work on that publicity campaign can have little impact.

Meta Tags and KeywordsThe word that still means success is TEAM. Working together can generate a lot of positive results. Especially when any campaign directs pr clients, customers, or B2B companies to visit your web site. Hey, if all the publicity you’re doing doesn’t include the web address then you’re missing out.

Ok, let’s get to building traffic.

As we all know, Google and Yahoo as well as MSN have taken over the search world. They are also changing how search works. By knowing some of these tips, pr people can better understand the mysterious world of search to improve their press releases, articles, and even how to find things on the net.

An important element now is TAGS. Yes, these are the same tags that were once considered a few years ago as a way into the hearts of the search engines. These were the metatags, title, tags, etc. But unlike they were before; there are new twists to making tags more successful. Understanding optimization and knowing how this new system is working, is very important in SEO marketing for web sites.

Let me give you a few tips that I read about the NEW Yahoo My Web. For example:

  • You can now share bookmarks
  • Tagging images. This is great for pr stuff and bloggers

Publicity agencies and pr people as well as pr clients now need to get more serious about optimization. It is how companies’ web sites will survive in the next couple of years.

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How To Get Emails Read

Its all in the subject

Good publicity writers think the only way to get an email read is to give the facts. A copywriter believes it is how creative you are that gets people to read an email. So who is right? Both.

email tips to marketingYou need to put on the creative thinking cap when writing powerful emails that can generate a publicity story, or get an article published. So what are the tricks to getting emails read? No silver bullet when it comes to the media. Just keep the creative in check. Don’t lie or twist (pr people like a publicity twist when possible) the truth. Give your recipient a reason to open the email, then provide them with the information you said you would. Otherwise, your name, company, can be put into the "do not read" list.

There is a top 10 list of ways to make your emails read, and this can apply to B2B, consumers and even the media. Just keep your mind open to the audience your are addressing to.

A good report titled “Ten E-mail starters to break writers block” will give you some good sampling of what I am telling you to do.

Publicity people and pr clients need to read these top 10 and see how to make the rules apply to your specific situation. The writer is giving you some tools, now you need to adapt them to your publicity campaign. If you are developing an email campaign, then all you need to do is follow the steps.

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